In the truck tire industry, tire mounting facilities mount truck tires on suitable rims, inflate the tires, and prepare and package them for shipment to various truck manufacturers or service centers. Due to the competitive nature of the business, the commercial viability of these facilities depends on minimizing costs, reducing production time, and increasing overall efficiency. As shipping costs of the mounted tires comprise a large expense, most such facilities serve a limited geographic area, and thus cannot undertake the burden of large capital investment in machinery.
The step of tire inflation is a critical step in the tire mounting process. Once the tire is mounted on an appropriately-size rim, the tire must be inflated to the proper pressure. This requires a two step process: setting the bead with an initial blast of air, then inflating the tire through the valve stem. As truck tires generally have a sizable volume, the time to inflate a typical truck tire using a standard air hose can be several minutes. As the time to mount a tire is substantially less than the time to inflate it, the tire inflation step can be a chokepoint in the process, and thus substantially reduce production.
Various methods and systems for inflating tires are well known in the prior art. One known method adjusts the inflation device to match a particular size of tire. When the tire size is changed, however, the inflation device must be adjusted and re-calibrated, with a concomitant increase in cost and loss in production time. A related tire inflation device with two inflation chambers accommodates tires of different sizes, but the device is expensive and cumbersome. Such devices also are designed to work in production lines in automobile or tire factories, and thus are not suited for truck tires.
Accordingly, what is needed is a simple and inexpensive device and method for positioning mounted truck tires for effective bead-setting, and then inflating said tires to a set pressure in an efficient manner.